


New Hampshire Primary

by Mybaloney



Category: House of Cards (US TV)
Genre: M/M, Tender Sex, also Ed likes Game of Thrones, followed by a sharp redress of the altered power dynamic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-23
Updated: 2017-11-19
Packaged: 2019-01-21 21:46:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 20,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12466604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mybaloney/pseuds/Mybaloney
Summary: Remember that scene in the first episode of Season Four where Frank asks Ed to keep him company, and Ed offers to stay over, but Frank says no? He should have said yes, obviously, and I always like to think that he changed his mind and did.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Upon reflection, this is pretty long, so now I've split things into chapters for easier reading.

 

Ed started his day running.

 

Technically, he started it by double-checking and then triple-checking the electronics on the one floor of the reserved three the President would actually be using, but he had, more or less, gone running first thing. Immediately after the electronics sweep, Ed had gone back to his room, changed into sweats, and run a couple of circuits of the hotel gardens.

 

The ground was just dry enough to be manageable. It was mush in places. Ed dodged the worst of it, some puddles and a lot of frost. He didn’t slip, but his trainers got muddy and his sweatpants got wet up to the knee. The sun had only just started to come up, so nothing was drying. His lungs hurt from the cold.

 

When he came indoors his fingers were tingling. Johnson rushed over to him immediately. “Sir?” he said, as Ed was taking out his headphones and turning his iPod off. Ed didn’t have to answer, he just waited.

 

“I have the background checks,” said Johnson.

Ed frowned. “For the hotel staff? I came from Air Force One, Johnson, it’s go time. You shouldn’t still be vetting the staff.”

“No, we just assumed… you’d want to have them. In case. To double-check.”

“Well sure, okay,” Ed said, sighing. “Put ‘em on my desk. The desk in my room. That’s my desk for the duration.”

“Not the operations desk, sir?”

“If operations doesn’t already have copies, Johnson,” Ed said, “I’m going to be pissed.”

 

The desk in his room had a lot of hotel crap on it. He swept it aside and put some pens in a mug on it, then unpacked his laptop. Arranging those things made him feel officious and sensible and properly boss-like. He felt like he wanted a small framed photo for the desk, though he didn’t know what it would be of. He didn’t have one on his regular desk either. His regular desk was pretty much just a paper receptacle with a nameplate. Papers had started to accumulate on this desk too.

 

He guessed the time he’d taken to grab a coffee from the hotel kitchen had allowed Johnson to spread the word about where papers should go. He flicked through them. It was mostly boilerplate, things that would eventually need his signature, but that for now were taken care of. He didn’t sign them right away. Despite knowing what they were, he still felt like he needed to read each one of them closely.

 

He finished his coffee in the shower. He dressed and shaved, and brushed his teeth. He combed his hair, clipped on his mics and badge, holstered his gun, straightened his tie, and went to visit operations. They’d set up and already fanned agents out over the grounds. Ed read through the manifest anyway, and asked them to check in with each agent, one by one. Not because he didn’t trust his people, but because anybody, any time, could make a mistake. No matter how dedicated they were. And it only took one mistake.

 

It looked like nobody had made any though. He spoke with a couple of perimeter agents himself, just to be sure that their eyes and their lines were open, but after that he issued instructions for the foreseeable future, including the sweep and set-up of all six of the day’s venues, and drove out to the airport. He could have radioed to have the Air Force One detail bring the President in without him, but he didn’t. He was uneasy about leaving the President alone as long as he had, even if it was alone on a huge, sumptuously appointed plane with a comprehensive staff and so not actually alone at all. His unease was stupid, and he knew it, but there it was anyway.

 

By the time he got there, the sun was up. The slickness was evaporating from the tarmac everywhere, except the outsized shadow of Air Force One. He drove over to the foot of the stairs and got out, handed his keys to one of the other agents, and folded his arms while the guy drove away. It was cold in the shadow, but at least he wasn’t wet anymore.

 

The rest of the detail climbed into the front compartment of Beast or into the other car, with nods in Ed’s direction. Ed wasn’t driving on the way back to Concord. There were briefing issues with the President, and he and Stamper were required in the back. Ed opened the door for them when they came down the stairs. “Did you get any sleep, sir?” Ed asked, when the President had settled into the car. He didn’t look like he had. Ed assumed that some of that was wariness, adrenaline in preparation for the day ahead, but he knew that a lot of it wasn’t.

 

“I’ve been a little busy running the free world, Meechum,” the President said, in a tone that was definitely not an invitation to further questioning. Ed took the hint. He concentrated on filling the President in on the set-up at the hotel. Stamper outlined the day and Ed added the details that were his to add. The President took it all in and nodded. He tapped his knuckles on the door of the car, twice. It wasn’t a signal to get driving, they already were. It was a Presidential tic.

 

The breakfast was the usual affair for this kind of junket, if a little more packed due to the nature of Primary season. Business leaders and press and pastries, nothing remarkable. It was warm bordering on steamy in the reception room and after checking in with his advance team, Ed sent agents to the four corners and one to the buffet table. The President shook hands on continuous rotation, barely pausing to brush off croissant crumbs, until finally he whispered to Ed that everybody here was obnoxious, and he wanted the next call that came through to be his excuse to leave.

 

Ed had Stamper fake one. He thought the President might be mad about that when they could have waited for a real call, but he wasn’t. He just seemed tired and relieved.                      

 

After the breakfast, the President took a nap in the car. He probably didn’t mean to – if he had, he wouldn’t have done it slumped against the window, which luckily was tinted black – but Ed refused to let anybody back in the car for 20 minutes anyway. Stamper got shitty about the schedule, but Ed just staunched him out. “He needs to sleep,” Ed said. “I’m not a strategist but you don’t want him on stage without any, do you?”

 

“20 minutes isn’t going to make any difference to that,” said Stamper. “But it does make a difference to our timetable.”

“Well then I don’t know what to tell you,” Ed said, and folded his arms. “Because he’s asleep, and a courtesy Campaign HQ visit isn’t a national emergency.”

They weren’t even late for the visit, even if the President was pissed at them both for not immediately waking him up. Stamper, graciously, did not drop Ed in it and the President actually looked better after his catnap. That wasn’t surprising though. Ed was already aware of the President’s Wrestlemania-worthy regenerative powers. You couldn’t put him down for long, not for anything.

 

After the Campaign office, Ed read the paper through a series of phone calls and managerial issues. Grayson called with a detailed update on Dunbar, which the President put on speakerphone. Stamper argued with him, then tried not to, then argued again. Ed only half listened. He knew about as much about the campaign as he needed to. He wasn’t that interested in Dunbar, for one thing, but for another, Grayson always sounded shifty to Ed, and that made it hard to take anything he said seriously. There was something about his voice and the way it delighted in uncovering unseemly details. Grayson reminded Ed of a jackal, predatory and opportunistic. Stamper, meanwhile, reminded him of a pit-bull, low to the ground and dangerous. Listening to them argue was more interesting in terms of tone than it was in terms of content.

 

Then Grayson brought up the First Lady and Stamper started to shut him down and the President interrupted. “Alright, children,” he snapped. “How much of this do I actually need to know?”

 

It wasn’t much. Grayson just needed his input on a response to one of Dunbar’s points. The President gave it, then hung up on Grayson without saying goodbye. Stamper seemed smug about that until the President gave him a look. Ed knew that Grayson would call back before long, only this time he’d probably be funneled straight to Stamper.

 

At lunch, the President seemed awkward. He pushed it down and grinned and glad-handed and sweet-talked so it probably wasn’t noticeable to anyone except Ed, whose actual job was to mirror his movements, but in addition to a slight stiffness when he moved, it seemed like he didn’t want to eat anything while people were looking at him. That made sense to Ed. There wasn’t a moment somebody wasn’t asking him something and he wouldn’t have found time to chew if he had eaten. Also, a lot of the questions were about the First Lady. Ed wondered if maybe the effort of not talking with his mouth full was too much for the President on top of everything.

 

Ed trusted his instincts and swiped a couple of sandwiches. The President inhaled them gratefully on the walk back to the car. He read his speech again and edited a couple more references to the First Lady out of it. He asked Stamper for an update on Texas.

 

It was cold at the warehouse rally. Ed had to restrain himself from telling the President he should put on a sweater. If the President thought his Air Force One windbreaker was sufficient for the temperature, then it was. He didn’t seem cold, moving bullishly through the crowds with his head down and his shoulders forward, until he remembered to smile and charm. He spoke energetically, to excited cheers. He cooed at a toddler in a hat and tiny snowsuit, which privately Ed found adorable, even though he knew by now that if the President could have run an election without interacting with a single child, he would have done. “Well hello there, aren’t you a cutie!” the President said, addressing the kid in a warm, lilting voice. It sounded true, however much it wasn’t, just like his enthusiastic descriptions of the First Lady’s totally planned and in no way personally traumatizing visit to Texas sounded true.

 

After the rally, when the First Lady still hadn’t called, the President sent Stamper to Dallas, and put Ed on assignment. Ed could hear how shaken up he was in how furiously he did that, even if he wouldn’t admit it in any other way. It made Ed flinch, that barely contained anger and what it meant. If restraining himself from insisting on a sweater had been hard, not clasping the President’s hand and squeezing it in reassurance was nearly impossible. He wanted to put his hands under his armpits to stop himself. He was proud of himself that he managed not doing either of those things.

 

He left the President’s afternoon meetings and donor dinner to subordinates. The meetings were routine – that whole “running the free world” business – and conducted in his temporary office in the hotel conference room instead of out in the open. And the dinner wasn’t an Event, it was just a six-person dinner party, all in one room and easily guarded. It was okay to leave that to subs. Ed required steady reports, but he told himself to trust his people.

 

He used the time to make phone calls. First, he spoke to the First Lady’s detail, confirming what Stamper had told him, that she refused to speak to the President and wasn’t interested in being persuaded. He considered asking to speak to her himself – he thought she might actually agree to that – but he also thought it would be invasive. If she wanted to be left alone, then she deserved to be. Besides, he didn’t have anything to tell her, except that he hoped she was alright, and that he could offer a status report on the President that she doubtless didn’t want.

 

After requesting her travel logs and a general report on her movements, he called every contact he had in Dallas and the surrounding area, covering most of the 30th Congressional district, the airport, and highway patrol. He amassed profile information on the First Lady’s family, which he suspected wouldn’t be news to the President. He began making complete dossiers on the local councilors she’d met with. Nothing stuck out. Nobody concerned was nefarious enough to warrant this kind of investigation.

 

Ed had expected that. His job was to confirm it without prejudice, but he didn’t learn anything surprising. This part was routine. It was easy enough to fall back into being Officer Ed.

 

He knew how it all sounded though. The Highland Park police officer a Dallas contact put him in touch with probably would have laughed at him if Ed had allowed it. Ed didn’t allow it. He didn’t even crack a joke himself, which he would have done ordinarily, working the buddy cop angle. He would have, but he couldn’t.

 

He knew why. The First Lady out there in Texas, and the President here, small and alone and running on fumes. Ed worried for them. Not about their safety, but about how they were. The First Lady was like a heron, the kind of solitary bird you only got to see from far away - if she was sad, nobody would know about it. And the President wouldn’t even wear a sweater when it was cold.

 

Ed didn’t worry about the campaign. As important as it was to everyone else, he couldn’t make it matter to him beyond the fact that it mattered to the President. It wasn’t his concern anyway. Like he’d told Stamper, he wasn’t a strategist.

 

The evening dragged on and he considered, briefly, taking himself into Concord central after arranging effective cover. Not for all night, just for a few hours, long enough to have a couple of drinks at a bar and if possible to pick someone up or be picked up by them. Blow off some steam (maybe literally) before getting back to the grind of this low-level investigation that wasn’t much more involved than data entry. Shake off how oddly wound up he was from it all. Almost as soon as the thought crossed his mind, though, he knew he wasn’t going to do it. He passed no judgment on the obsessive work he’d been asked to do – there were few parts of Ed’s job that weren’t obsessive by nature – but he had registered, quietly, that this was the kind of needless information a person would ask for when they needed to feel more in control of things than they were. That flicker of instability in the President’s request, it would have kept him from stepping away from his detail at the best of times.

 

By the time he’d hung up on Texas, he’d already decided that the extent of his engagement with Concord would be ordering another subordinate to get him a burger from Five Guys. This one called him Sir too, which by now Ed was almost used to, and the burger appeared momentarily. It was deposited on his temporary desk with the kind of silent acquiescence that the Secret Service encouraged but which Ed had been on the inside of for too long to easily accept.

 

Still, he thanked the subordinate, and he ate the burger one-handed while typing up his reports. He sent an email to Stamper with the reports attached, then called him to make sure he’d gotten it.

 

Stamper had. Calling was over-cautious. Stamper was never far out of contact, and none of the information was that urgent anyway. They spoke briefly, and after that Ed crammed the end of the burger into his mouth and sucked the sauce off his hand. He couldn’t remember what toppings he’d asked for, but he could taste ketchup and hot sauce. He wouldn’t have cared anyway. He wasn’t fussy about burgers. He called the subordinate back in.

 

“What’s your name?” Ed asked him, and wondered why he didn’t feel bad about not asking it before.

“Hendricks, sir.”

“Okay, Hendricks,” Ed said. “What’s happening in operations?”

 

Operations had initiated the changing of the guard without calling for Ed. They were apologetic when came in, but Ed was pleased, and he said so. “I’m Special Agent in Charge,” Ed explained, for what felt like the thousandth time, “not Special Agent in Micromanagement. Bartczak here is responsible for coordination for the next 12 hours, and you’ll report to him. You know how to do your jobs, you don’t need my permission to do them.”

 

There were nods all around the room. Ed hoped it would stick this time. He knew his position was unusual. Not being head of the PPD, every President had one of those, but the extent to which he alone relayed operational instructions because the President tended to speak to him personally. He wasn’t their boss in every particular – the Secret Service itself was everyone’s boss, and operations was designed to function without him – but he was their boss on the ground, and the scope of that was a little hazier that normal. He knew he received additional deference. He didn’t like it.

 

“Remind me what we’re looking at again?” Ed said. He knew, but he wanted it repeated back. Double-checking.

“Two perimeter details, exterior and interior, same thing, just the evening shift. Lobby detail, and one on the President’s floor,” Bartczak told him. “Kitchen. In case.”

“Okay. Yep. Looks good to me. Anticipating any problems with the midnight shift?”

“No, sir.”

“On the room?”

“There’s two men in the hallway, and when he gets in, we’ll put someone outside his door.”

 

“I’ll take that,” Ed said.

“Sir, you’ve been on since yesterday.”

“And I’ll let you know if I need to be relieved,” Ed said. “Right now, I’ll take the door.”

 

He said it for two reasons: because he didn’t want anyone else interacting directly with the President in what, Ed suspected, might turn out to be something of a State, and because he didn’t want to leave him alone. Ed didn’t sleep much anyway, just when he had to, and even then it took a lot of prep-work. Sleep didn’t worry him. The President did.

 

“What…” Bartczak said, hesitantly, “what rotation are you actually on, sir?”

 

Ed didn’t actually know. “It’s on the manifest,” he said, officiously, as if he did.

“If we switch you out at midnight…”

“If you need to, I’ll tell you. Until then, assume you don’t.”

“Sir, I don’t mean to, uh, challenge your authority, sir, but…”

 

Ed took a breath. Boss-like, he told himself. You are the boss. “You can have someone on reserve,” he said. “You should have someone on reserve, actually. You’re right, I’m wrong. It’s been at least three shifts back-to-back, I’m just anticipating… you know, he might be…”

Bartczak nodded. “Say no more, sir.”

 

Ed wondered how much any of them knew. Probably nothing more than would have been true without implication. Presidents trusted their top guys. They built up relationships. Still possibly problematic, but Ed couldn’t worry about that now. If his people did their jobs right, it didn’t matter anyway.

 

He didn’t bother going back to his room before he went down to the lobby to meet the President. The President was still casually dressed, still in his Air Force One windbreaker, but now carrying a briefcase. He looked exhausted. Someone should have carried the briefcase for him. Ed would have offered himself if he didn’t know the President would refuse.

 

The President didn’t sound tired when he spoke, though. When Ed merged with the security detail flanking him, he started questioning him immediately. “Doug says he got your email.”

“Yes sir,” Ed said.

“You talk it over with him? The stuff that wasn’t on her schedule?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You find out anything else since then?”

“No, sir,” Ed said. “She’s just at the house. She hasn’t left.”

 

The President wasn’t impressed with that answer, but there wasn’t much else Ed could say. He took out his earpiece. For some reason it seemed appropriate to do that. The President probably didn’t notice, but Ed did it anyway.

 

When they reached the elevator, the rest of the detail stepped aside to let them in. “How was your dinner, sir?” Ed asked.

 

The President looked at him sideways. His mouth was set in a grim line that on anyone else Ed would have called sullen. He didn’t answer. Ed folded his hands.

 

“Tell you what I saw, Meechum,” the President said. “On the way back, driving back here.”

“What’s that, sir?”

“They have an Air and Space museum. Here. In Concord. Near one of the colleges. It has a planetarium.”

“Really, sir?”

“Really. The McAuliffe-Shepard Discovery Center, that’s what it’s called. How about that?”

“Oh, for… is that named after… didn’t she die in the Challenger explosion?”

 

“Christina McAuliffe,” the President said. “And yes, she did. Slipped the surly bonds of Earth and touched the face of god, you remember that? Reagan’s address about it? I’m surprised you remember the Challenger. How old were you? Five?”

“Nine, sir,” Ed said.

“She’s buried here, actually. In Concord. She lived here. That’s why, come to think of it.”

“Probably, sir.”

“Alan Shepard, meanwhile, was the first American in space.”

“Was he from Concord?”

“No,” the President said. “At least I don’t think so. Do you have your phone? Look it up, would you? I would, but I’m the President.”

 

Ed almost laughed at that, but he managed not to. He took out his phone. “Do you want to go, sir?” he said. “I’m sure we could arrange that with enough notice.”

 

“I wouldn’t have time,” the President snorted. “I just thought… we come of a nation of grand achievements forged in the fire of war. The spirit of inquiry, of investigation… all of it shaped by competition, often bloody, often fatal. The last man standing is not the one who innovates, but the man whose innovation outlasts the chain of inevitable casualties. Don’t you think that’s interesting?”

“I suppose so, sir.”

“Do you play video games?”

“Not really, sir,” Ed said, not pointing out that he’d answered that question before, and several times. He opened the Wikipedia page on Alan Shepard.

 

“Did you know that one of the first video games was designed based on computers programmed to calculate the trajectories of ballistic missiles?” the President said. “It was called Tennis for Two. Doesn’t that impress you, how innocent a name that is, considering what it came from?”

“Is that… is it the same game as Pong, sir?”

 

The President gave him an indulgent smile. “No. But I suppose the principle is the same. More or less.” He seemed to collect his thoughts. “If video games count as innovation. Debatable.”

“I think they do, sir.”

“I hate tennis anyway,” the President said. The elevator stopped. “But at least nobody dies playing it. Or do they? Look that up too.”

“Alan Shepard was from Derry,” Ed said, reading off his phone. “Derry, New Hampshire.”

 

“Well, there, we’ve solved that mystery,” the President said, striding out into the hall. “Tennis fatalities?”

“Um,” Ed said, “at least one?”

“Well, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle.”

 

The detail flanked back as they reached the room. “Is there anything you need, sir?” Ed asked.

“No,” the President said. “No, I’m fine.”

“Well, then, I hope you can get some rest.”

 

The President twisted his mouth at him, but Ed didn’t add anything else. He opened the door to the room. He stepped in, looked around it, let the President pass, and closed the door. Outside, he put his earpiece back in. He shuffled himself into At Ease. He started to think about what to think about. He wondered briefly if he’d be bored. Probably not. Ed was good at not being bored.

 

One thing Ed never did while on duty was have sexual fantasies. It was a specific personal choice, based on the fact that he didn’t like to think about anything he’d be disappointed to stop thinking about. Alertness meant not being more interested in your own thoughts than the world around you. You could daydream, but it couldn’t be too involved.

 

It also meant, though, that you couldn’t think about anything too boring, or you risked zoning out entirely. There was precision in protection detail woolgathering, precision he’d been developing since basic and honing since the Capitol police.

 

Well. Honing since Afghanistan. But that was different.

 

He clocked the layout of the space – short hallway, one window, no other access points from the external hall, barring the one flanked by two other agents – and flicked through his options. He’d already been thinking about the First Lady in Texas, partly because he wondered what she’d be like without the President and what she did when nobody was looking at her. She wasn’t like the President, she never forgot Ed was there when he detailed her. And he’d never been to Texas in his life, that occurred to him too. He’d thought about that on the phone listening to those twangy accents – what was it like to be in Texas, at this time of day, this time of year. The First Lady didn’t have an accent, not even a trace. How long had it taken her to get rid of it?

 

He considered thinking about _In the Country_ , which so far he’d read 4 of the 9 stories out of, on the recommendation of the _Men’s Journal_ in the waiting room for his physical. Physicals were the only time he ever read magazines anymore – who’d buy magazines when the Internet existed? – but the book was good, it was worthwhile following up on. He didn’t read a lot of books by women writers, though he figured he probably should. It was dumb, maybe, but he hated the idea of being grilled about what he read and coming off like a jockish drone. He also figured he should probably think the stories through in detail, rather than just mindlessly absorbing what he read. It had been about a million years in life events since college, but that wasn’t any excuse.

 

He could think about any of those four stories, or he could think about whether or not it would be possible to read the other five. He could also think about how much of his hesitation at doing that had to do with the profound awkwardness of the fourth story, for no other reason than the fact it was set in Bahrain. It wasn’t about anything shocking, it was just set there. Fillipino families were about as far from single servicemen as you could get, but things happening on the same land was enough to stop him up short.

 

He probably shouldn’t think about that. He understood why he’d stopped reading, and he understood what he’d need to do to start again. He didn’t need to think about it any more than that. He remembered once trying to analyze why he couldn’t read about the Korengal Valley and regretting it immediately. Even remembering having analyzed that was enough to make him seize, and shut that direction of thoughts right down.

 

He checked the hallway again, scanning his eyes up to the ceiling. Nothing had changed, but sizing the space up again put him back in reality. He shifted his feet and pulled up the deck of Things To Contemplate once again. He imagined spreading the options out in front of him like Tom Cruise in _Minority Report_. It wasn’t actually like that, but it was a good enough visual metaphor for what he was doing. _Minority Report_ was a fun movie, dumb, but not that bad.

 

He didn’t get time to pick an option though. The President called him into the room. Ed opened the door so quickly he had to pull himself back from bursting in.


	2. Chapter 2

The President was standing next to the open closet, windbreaker in hand, seemingly frozen. “Claire’s clothes are here,” he said. He wasn’t happy about it.

“I’ll get Advance,” Ed said, and did.

 

Advance came quickly, but not quickly enough Ed couldn’t feel the full weight of his fuck up. The First Family’s effects weren’t technically his remit – actually, they weren’t his remit at all – but that didn’t matter. If he could check the electronics, he could check the fucking closet, and he hadn’t, and the First Lady’s clothes were there.

 

He wanted to apologize but he knew it wouldn’t do any good. The President hated apologies. Advance apologized as they loaded dresses and shoes into their arms, but the President wasn’t interested in that at all, and he said so. “Alright,” he said, “just get it out.” Ed wanted to hug him, or at least do something to soften the blow.

 

That was a painfully stupid impulse, so instead he just held the door for Advance as they bundled out. The TV was on, he noticed, and playing, probably unsurprisingly, Primary news. Ed tuned in long enough to hear the anchors talking about the Republican candidate then tuned back out again. They mentioned his war record. That wasn’t a thing a person should showboat about. It bothered him but it didn’t really distract him.

 

The President wasn’t looking at the TV. He was wearing his reading glasses on the end of his nose – he’d picked up a paper from the pile that had accumulated at the foot of the bed, as if he hadn’t had enough to do today – and he looked, Ed thought, entirely forlorn. Ed figured that the least he could do under the circumstances was leave the President alone, so when the President sat down on the bed and he started to leave.

 

“Meechum,” the President said.

 

The TV was comparing the Republican to JFK. Somebody got that comparison every election cycle. Ed doubted it meant anything, beyond what it always meant: younger than usual, and not completely inept at public speaking. Still, he didn’t think the President would want to hear it, not right now.

 

He came back into the room and closed the door behind him.

“This morning,” the President said. “When you went into her room…”

 

“Uh,” Ed said.

 

The President looked at him expectantly. Ed swallowed. “I told her we were leaving soon. She just…”

 

The President was still looking at him. He swallowed again. It didn’t help. “She was looking at a photograph of the mandala. The one you gave her.”

 

The President’s reaction to that was almost too much to take. His face seemed to crumple. He’d taken his glasses off to listen to Ed’s reply and his eyes looked big, hurt and the rest of him looked small somehow by comparison. Ed wished he’d had something better to say, or something kinder to say it about. “Goodnight, sir,” he said, instead. It was inadequate, but then so was Ed, or at least he felt he was.

“Keep me company for a bit,” the President said, suddenly.

 

“Sir?” Ed said.

 

“You just have a seat,” the President said, with abrupt, magnanimous casualness. “I've got some reading that I have to do.” The TV had switched over to covering the warehouse rally, but he didn’t seem to notice that. It seemed strange. Ed didn’t have the first idea about how to read it.

 

So he didn’t. That wasn’t his job anyway. “Yes, sir,” he said. He had a seat.

 

The President put his glasses back on and attended to his papers. The TV had started in on the questions from the rally about the first Lady’s whereabouts. Ed remembered those questions, and he remembered the President’s invisibly strained and publicly cheery answers too.

 

So did the President, evidently. “Turn that off,” he said, gruffly. Ed did. He got up, crossed the room, turned it off, crossed back to his seat, and sat back down.

 

“Hmm, aren't you a cutie,” the President said, not looking up.

 

Ed just about flushed. It took him a split-second to understand that the President wasn’t saying that to him, wasn’t thanking him for the TV, wasn’t initiating anything. He was mocking his own rally persona and what he’d said to the toddler in the snowsuit, because it had just been quoted on the television and they’d both heard it. Flushing was maybe the stupidest possible reaction Ed could have had. The invitation to stay had thrown him, he figured. But that was stupid. That invitation didn’t mean anything, not tonight.

 

He sat himself down in the chair. He shifted in it. He forced his face to stop burning. He thought about _In The Country_ again. He did it resolutely. He did not think about telling the President to put on a sweater at the warehouse rally and how he wished he could have.

 

He wondered again if maybe he should make himself read the remaining five stories, which from flicking ahead he knew weren’t about Bahrain. The sweater narrative was resistant to that contemplation though, so he discarded it. He pushed deeper. He called on staples, his most surefire boredom cures, his most reliable distraction material. He thought about _A Feast for Crows_ and figured he’d probably just end up reading that again instead of any worthier novel. Maybe even skimming it except for the Alayne Stone chapters and Brienne. And so what if he did. He wondered what Tom Yates would say about _A Song of Ice and Fire_ overall, and then he stopped thinking about that because it made him sour and he thought he was probably doing a face.

 

The President didn’t seem to be looking at him at all, but he still shouldn’t do a face. Just in case the President asked. He didn’t want to have to answer that he was thinking about fantasy novels and Tom Yates.

 

Then, there was the fifth season of _Game of Thrones_. That would come in April, probably, or maybe sooner. Walker had been allowed advance copies of the episodes when he was in office, maybe the President was too? What if Ed asked him? “Sir, may I please watch your advance Presidential copies of Game of Thrones?” “What’s _Game of Thrones?_ ” he imagined the President saying in that low, amused drawl of his. Though actually, he probably knew what _Game of Thrones_ was. He didn’t watch TV shows, but he knew about things like that. He’d have read reviews of it. He’d have an opinion.

 

He might even like it, Ed thought. He’d like it if they watched it together. Maybe in the evening, an evening Ed was off duty.

 

That, too, was probably a bad line of thinking to get started on. In fact it definitely was. Those weren’t appropriate thoughts to have. Not on duty, not in New Hampshire, and not in the room with the leader of the free world. Which was what the President was, even if right now he just looked like a small, tired, white-haired man reading documents.

 

What would Brienne have thought about, outside Renly’s tent? Was that too stupid an analogy, thinking of himself in that way? Ser Edward Meechum, Knight of New Hampshire? Brienne wouldn’t have gotten bored either, but that was never really in the books, how she kept herself from doing that. Not that Ed was in danger of getting bored. The President was just reading, he wasn’t saying anything, but Ed watched anyway, when he felt like it wouldn’t be staring, and he wasn’t bored. He watched him move and lick his lips and make small, occasionally aggravated sounds. Boredom wasn’t the issue.

 

He wore his glasses more and more now. Never on television and never in public, just at home in the residence, or working. And in front of Ed.

 

Renly, Ed remembered, had stopped Brienne from looking ridiculous, that’s why she’d been so devoted to him. He’d danced with her on Tarth when all of the other lords had made fun of her. Reasonable grounds for devotion. Ed didn’t worry about being made fun of, and own standards in dance partners were deliberately low, but that wasn’t how he made decisions. He got it, he thought. Brienne’s whole thing. What he did, when he went out, it didn’t have anything to do with this. What he did when he went out didn’t happen on the same planet. He understood Brienne’s point of view.

 

That Renley was gay was subtler in the books than the show, but frankly Ed preferred it unsubtle. His tolerance for subtext wasn’t as low as _certain people_ probably assumed, but he’d lived through Catholic college and DADT. Even if you weren’t going to go on about it – and Ed definitely wasn’t – sometimes he preferred to be allowed to just see something for what it actually was. There wasn’t anything wrong with seeing Renly and Loras kissing each other, or with Oberyn Martell and Ellaria Sand doing it threeway style with a guy in Littlefinger’s brothel. That was fine, it was good to see, it was better than the books were, in his opinion. Not that anybody was asking Ed, but it was.

 

One thing the show didn’t include was that Sansa thought the Hound had kissed her even though he hadn’t. Sansa was prone to imagining things far, far too romantically. It was a mistake, it got her into trouble. With Joffrey particularly, but also generally. The Hound had told her the story of his burned face, but it didn’t mean he was in love with her. Probably it meant that she was a sympathetic ear.

 

Ed knew something about that. About being there and of use and about weighting things with significance they probably didn’t have. About wrapping a memory around yourself, filtering it, adjusting it, stretching it out, until it wasn’t really a memory at all. If he’d been allowed, at the warehouse rally, Ed would have taken the President aside. “Look, sir,” he would have said, “it’s cold. Put something warmer on.” The President would have argued with him, because he was like that, he couldn’t take advice from anyone, but if that had happened, which it would have, Ed would have held firm and sternly zipped his jacket right up to his chin. Or maybe he’d have carried a scarf with him? He could imagine that, wrapping a scarf around the President’s neck, smoothing his hair, stroking his cheek. Petting him like a chicken with ruffled feathers.

 

It was stupid how much he wished he could have done that. He didn’t think like that usually, or at least when he did it was usually easier to push aside. The President’s hurt expression, and how tired he was, and how alone he’d have to be tonight in that tiredness, Ed figured that all had something to do with it. It wasn’t always as hard not to grab his hand as it had been at the warehouse. It wasn’t always as hard to push aside daydreams, especially ones this inappropriately facile. He’d wanted to call the President by his name. He never did that. No amount of times the President put his hand in Ed’s pants or his mouth around Ed’s dick could change what Ed called him.

 

He wasn’t sure precisely when it had happened – not staring had been harder than usual too – but the President had gone to sleep. In the middle of a paper, it looked like, because he was still holding one, though the hand holding it had dropped to his side. Ed could see the President’s chest rising and falling with deep, slow breaths and his eyelashes fluttering against his cheek. His glasses were still balanced on the end of his nose.

 

His instincts told him to at least cover the President with a blanket. It was warm enough in the room, but he shouldn’t sleep like that. He shouldn’t have his shoes on, either. Or his glasses. Or his clothes, really, but Ed wasn’t going to take his pants off now. He didn’t know what he could do, really, or precisely how what he could do could be separated out from what he should do. He made himself let the hot, prickly feeling in his stomach settle before he did anything. He wanted to keep watch but he also hurt from not touching him, from not doing anything to make his sleep more comfortable. As stupid as that was. And it was pretty stupid.

 

Ed considered these things carefully. For a little while, probably, although it was difficult to tell how much time was passing in the stillness of the room, where the light was muted and the only sound was breath. Then he eased himself up, moved around the bed as quietly as he could, and gently slid the President’s glasses off his face.

 

The President’s eyes snapped open. “What are you doing?” he barked, pulling back onto the pillows defensively. Ed stepped back too.

 

“You fell asleep, sir,” Ed said, stupidly. As if the President didn’t know that he’d fallen asleep. Unless he didn’t? Unless that was what had panicked him. That was stupid too, surely. He looked pained, and frightened, and deeply unhappy to be awake and Ed didn’t know what to say. “Your glasses,” he said. “I was… I'm sorry, sir. I didn't mean to…” Stupid and ineffective. Ed swallowed. “You alright, sir?”

 

“No,” the President said. “I mean yes. I'm just…”

 

Just reconstituting, Ed thought. “Can I get you anything?” he said. “Some water?”

 

He still felt like he was rambling. And he must have been, because the way in which the President said “I'm fine,” in response sounded like it was meant to reassure him. Reassure _him_. As if Ed was the one alone in New Hampshire and in charge of the world.

 

“It's late,” the President added. “You should get some sleep.”

 

Ed hesitated. Not for long enough, however, because he didn’t know if he answered on impulse or as the result of a lengthy thought process, because it seemed like both things were true when he blurted this out: “I'll stay if you like,” he said.

 

The President’s eyes went wide with shock. Then they filled with something that looked like offense. He stared at Ed for long enough for Ed to understand that he’d fucked up. It had felt impossible not to say, had felt like it came up out of him from the part of his chest that had hurt all evening, but it had still been wrong. Completely wrong. He’d stepped well outside the rules, and he knew it.

 

“I think I'd like to be alone,” the President snapped. If “I’m fine,” had been meant to reassure him, this sharp response now was the opposite. He did add “but thank you,” in a slightly softer tone, but that seemed like it took immense effort.

 

“Of course, sir,” Ed said. He walked away, as quickly as he could without it actually being running. He wanted to run. He would, later. He’d use the hotel gym then he’d pound it out in the grounds for a solid hour. Until then, he refused to think about how this felt. About how much and in how many ways he’d fucked up. About how the President had still tried to be nice about it. He’d have the rest of the night to think about it anyway. At least he wouldn’t be bored.

 

His hand was on the door-handle when the President said his name again. Ed waited. Partly because he wasn’t sure he’d actually heard it.

 

He had though. “Meechum,” the President said, again, and Ed turned around.

 

The President had sat up, on the side of the bed. He looked agitated. “Would you just… come here for a minute?”

 

Ed did. He came over to the side of the bed again and folded his hands until the President said, “look, sit down, would you?” and he did that too.

 

They sat there for long enough to make Ed say, “sir?” again.

 

The President rubbed a hand over his face, sighing into it. “I’m…” he said, but he didn’t finish the sentence. He sighed again and gave Ed a pained half smile, then turned away and leaned forward, propping up his chin with his hand, elbow on his knees. After a second or two, he put his other hand on Ed’s thigh without looking at him. He closed his eyes.

 

Ed didn’t say anything. He figured he’d done more than enough saying. The President opened his mouth, it looked like to say something himself, but then he changed his mind. His thumb started to move absently on the inside of Ed’s thigh, but he still didn’t say anything.

 

Well, neither would Ed, then. He wouldn’t. He’d just sit there in total silence and let the President fondle his thigh just south of his junk looking utterly despondent. He cleared his throat. He thinned his lips. He tensed a little.

 

He couldn’t keep it up. “Sir, I… um.”

“Do you mind?” The President asked.

 

Did he mind what? Being silently felt up? Sort of? “Is there, uh, something I can do?” he said.

 

“I’m fine,” the President said.

Ed swallowed. “I’m sure the First Lady…”

“The First Lady is fine, Meechum. We’re both fine.”

 

His response had a whisper of menace in it so Ed shut up again. He felt stupid for asking, anyway. He didn’t want to pry into the President’s personal feelings, that was probably the only situation where prying wasn’t his job. And it wasn’t his business either. “I’m sorry, sir.”

 

“You’ve got nothing to be sorry for,” the President said. His hand gripped Ed’s knee firmly for a second, but Ed couldn’t tell if it was for chastisement or for support. “Just be quiet.”

 

Ed did.

 

“Meechum,” the President asked. “What did you think of the speech?”

“I thought it was good, sir.”

The President snorted. “You’d probably say that no matter what it said.”

“No, sir.”

“Yes you would. You’re not paid to argue with me.”

 

Ed took a breath through his nose. “Crowd seemed to like it, sir.”

“So what if they did? People like that aren’t that difficult. Kiss a few of their babies and they’ll like anything you tell them. I’m not having an issue with people who already want me.”

“Sir?”

“Never mind, Meechum,” the President said. “Alright, that’s enough. You can go.”

 

He didn’t look angry about it. Almost, but not quite. Sad still, definitely. And overwhelmed, tired and frustrated on a molecular level, but not angry. He still wasn’t looking at Ed. And he had said to go. But he’d also started to move his hand again, up and down on Ed’s thigh.

 

“I’m sorry, sir,” Ed said, again.

 

The President snorted, but not because he thought Ed was funny. It was an exasperated snort, a last warning kind of snort. “And I told you, there’s nothing to be sorry for.”

 

Ed waited a moment. He took another breath. And then another. Then he slid his hand over the President’s and curled his fingers around it. “I’m still sorry,” he said.

 

The President gave him another sharp, shocked look. Ed just let him do that. He didn’t mind if the President looked at him like that, so long as he didn’t pull his hand away. He didn’t. He stared at Ed furiously, but he didn’t move his hand away, and then eventually, his face softened. He didn’t smile exactly, but he stopped looking at Ed like he was about to yell at him. “You should be sleeping,” he said.

 

Ed didn’t say anything.

“You’ve been with me all day, I know you haven’t. Aren’t there regulations? You’ve been on the clock since yesterday.”

“So have you.”

“I’m the President of the United States, Meechum. There’s no such thing as off the clock for me.”

 

Ed wasn’t sure he could get away with sassing at that directly, but he thought he could get away with a facial expression. He raised his eyebrows, just slightly. The President stared back at him. “Threats to global stability don’t stop because you’re tired,” he said, firmly. Ed was still holding his hand and the President was still letting him.

 

“Sorry I woke you up then, sir,” Ed said. “I mean, what if you push the, uh, The Button by accident because you’re tired?”

“Oh, that’s very funny,” the President said, in a tone that strongly indicated that it wasn’t.

“Pretty sure I can help you get back to sleep though,” Ed said, so brazenly he shocked himself.

 

The President’s mouth jerked upwards. Ed didn’t know what to follow that up with. He didn’t think he could pull out another shameless one liner like that, or pull it off for that matter if he did. But he did want to be clear. Clarity was in short supply: the President had let him stay, but he’d also said not to, and he hadn’t explained what to stay for if he even _was_ meant to stay. He was letting Ed hold his hand, he hadn’t shucked that off, but he also hadn’t done anything about it except sit there and not yell. Ed couldn’t think how to ask what exactly was happening. He also didn’t think it would go well for him if he did ask. He had a picture of himself, for a second, running through the hotel grounds, dodging the parts of the landscape that would make him slip.

 

He thought it over for a moment. And then for another moment, and then a little longer. He saw himself twisting around a patch of frost. Then he took another deep breath, gripped the President’s hand tighter, leaned over, and kissed him on the mouth.

 

After a moment of either surprise or hesitation, the President kissed back. It was very short, very soft, but he did. Then he moved his mouth away. He didn’t say anything, but he did curl his own fingers around Ed’s and squeeze.

 

That squeeze felt sudden and then suddenly very concrete. The President’s hand was holding his own, on top of his knee, and he stroked the back of Ed’s hand with his thumb while he looked at him, fondly, as if he was studying something familiar in Ed’s face. He wasn’t moving otherwise. Ed wondered if he’d kissed properly. If his mouth had been too slack or too eager. Too much tongue or not enough. Too enthusiastic or not selling it. He wondered if he should try again. He didn’t know. He’d made his decision so confidently but now he felt paralyzed.

 

He didn’t usually wonder any of that. The President usually told him exactly what to do. He didn’t know why he wasn’t telling him. He didn’t know why everything was so weighted and nervous. He didn’t know what he’d been thinking. He wondered if it was because he hadn’t had a drink. He wanted to ask for one. He swallowed hard.

 

“It’s alright, Meechum,” the President said, in a quiet voice that made Ed’s face burn. All of his thoughts must have shown on his face, all of his confusion.

 

“You’re alright,” the President said, again, but Ed wasn’t alright. It was impossible to be alright. Especially since the next thing the President did was slip his hand under Ed’s jacket, to his waist, and start stroking there. It made Ed hard immediately.

 

He felt himself flushing brighter. The President ran his hand down the line of Ed’s body and to his hip and there was no way how hard he was didn’t show. He felt the layers of clothing rub against each other, his shirt and his undershirt suddenly rough against his skin. He wanted to take them off. Take everything off. He wanted to push his body against the President’s and feel how warm he was. He looked warm. He always did. He looked firm and soft at the same time, and somehow substantially _there_ in a way that most people usually weren’t.

 

Ed wanted to put his arms all the way around him and press his face into the space between his shoulder and his neck and hold on to him and kiss him there like an animal.

 

The President didn’t usually give him the opportunity to do things like that. Not this early on, and usually not at all. They didn’t hug, that wasn’t their kind of thing. And Ed was almost certainly moving too fast, even if it was just in his own head. He wanted to kiss the President until his lips were bruised and rub against him until he came, and so far he’d only managed to kiss him once.

 

It was too much. He couldn’t stop making too much out of everything. Stumbling over the finish line before the race had even started, slipping on the frost into a deep valley. He concentrated on paying attention, on following the President’s lead, but it didn’t work. The President’s fingers slid ever so slightly under Ed’s belt, and sound that came out of Ed was mortifying.

 

The President grinned. “Uh,” Ed said. “Oh. God. Sorry, sir.”

“For what?” the President asked, amused. His voice was gentle. He hadn’t stopped moving his hand. It felt perverse. Impossible.

“Nothing, I guess. I just…”

 

Ed didn’t know how to say for what. He dropped his eyes. He was hot, and hard, and now totally tongue-tied and he probably deserved it, just starting things like that. He couldn’t say anything at all.

 

The President took pity on him. “Would you like something to drink?”

 

“Yes, sir, I would, thank you,” Ed said. He knew he shouldn’t, but he also thought it might be the least actionable thing he’d end up doing on duty tonight. One would be okay, under the circumstances.

 

The President liked that, his saying yes. Usually the President would have to push him to take a glass of something, a sip of something. He seemed pleased that he didn’t have to push, that Ed was allowing them a conspiracy. He smiled at Ed as if he was proud of him, and after a final stroke against his hip, he got up to pour them each a glass from the bottle next to the bed.

 

Ed valued the moment of composure. The President put one of the glasses into Ed’s hands and it felt cold and grounding. When the President sat down again with his own, Ed felt clearer. He took a sip. It went down easy. Then, as he swallowed, the President traced his thumb down the side of Ed’s face, fingers curled behind his ear, brushing against his neck. “Sir?” he said.

 

The President kissed him. He tipped Ed’s face towards him to make it a smoother motion, and the sensation of that was stupidly swoon-inducing. The kiss tasted of bourbon, and that tasted good, and the President was good at kissing, he was far too good at kissing, but it was more than that. It was the tenderness and the panache of it, of that gentle and fluid movement. The classical movie glamor of having his face directed so he could more easily be kissed. It made Ed hard again, but also soft in the middle at the same time. His hands felt useless, they tingled so much.

 

Ed needed to take his earpiece out. Feeling it there was distracting him, the plastic against his hot skin, the potential for voices in his ear. And the mics. If he threw his arms around the President’s neck like he wanted to, they’d hear him in operations maybe, the scratchy rustle of fabric, if they hadn’t already heard him moaning like the wind. Something that would sound like action they’d need to attend to. Or it might. They probably wouldn’t hear it, but what if they did? It was so easy to make a mistake. “Sir,” he said, as soon as he could breathe again, “Sir, I need to…”

“What do you need to do?”

“I need to um… my um… it’s um, my… my…”

“Oh dear,” the President said, fondly. “Have a drink, Meechum.”

 

Ed was so grateful for a clear instruction that he did it instantly. The bourbon hit his tongue again, cool and sharp. It helped. “Just my mics, sir.”

“Oh, that’s right, you’re wearing a wire,” the President said, before Ed’s inability to mask his response to that apparently made him add, “I’m joking, Meechum. That’s a joke. It’s some light Presidential humor.”

 

Ed frowned, but he unplugged both mics and the earpiece from the battery radio, and unclipped the radio from his belt. The President took the radio out of his hands. “So that’s how this works,” he said, turning it over, examining it.

 

Ed was pulling the mic cords out of his clothing so he wasn’t really looking, but he said, “yes, sir,” anyway. Funny, he thought. Funny the President didn’t know about that. Ed guessed that maybe every other time he’d been off-duty. Had to’ve been. He’d never have overlooked the mics. He was used to them, but you never really got used to a wire snaking up your sleeve, or across your body.

 

He hesitated over taking out the earpiece. That was a logistical complication. If operations tried to reach him and didn’t get anything, they’d assume there was a problem. If they had to try for long enough, they’d eventually burst into the room and find definite grounds for termination. And even if the President wanted to protect him, Ed couldn’t accept that. He’d let them dismiss him if that happened, and he wouldn’t be sorry. And he’d accepted that every time.

 

Didn’t mean he had to walk right into it though. He plugged the earpiece back into the radio after snaking it out of his collar. He left the mics unplugged, and curled them and their cords on top of the radio instead. The President was still holding the radio in his cupped hands, watching Ed, looking amused. “What’re you doing?” he asked, like it was funny. Ed was probably being too fastidious. He felt embarrassed about it.

 

“I’m leaving the earpiece on, sir.”

“Oh, I see. And why’s that?”

“So I’ll hear if there’s anything. They’ll want me to check in and I… just in case.”

“That’s very wise.”

“The earpiece doesn’t pick up anything, so, uh…” so you can make as much noise as you like, sir, he didn’t say. So I can. So when you put your hand inside me, nobody from operations will come running. He swallowed.

“So we’re off the radar,” the President said, smiling at him, maybe indulgently, it was hard to tell.

“Yes,” Ed told him. “Yes we are, sir.”

“Good.”

 

The way the President said that sent a shock through Ed’s belly. It was a split-second snap response; his low, rumbling tone, the way his eyes flicked up at Ed, the lit fuse of something _happening_. It lit through him and made his dick twitch. He clenched his teeth, trying to get back in control of things but it didn’t work. He couldn’t do anything except stare at the President while he smiled and put the microphones and battery radio on his beside table. When the President turned back to him and ran a hand up and down his arm, squeezing gently at his shoulder before letting go, the lining of Ed’s jacket rubbed against the fabric of his shirtsleeve, there was no hiding how hard it made him.

 

“Sir, I…” Ed said, but he didn’t know what he was saying, not really. The President had started to undress him. First the jacket, which Ed helped him with by shrugging out of. Then his holster and gun, which he laid carefully on the bedside table. Then his watch. That felt very solemn, the way he turned Ed’s wrist over to undo the snap then snake it over his hand.

 

He tugged off Ed’s tie and pulled his shirt out of his pants and unbuttoned it. Ed brought up his hands to help, but the President batted them aside. When the shirt was off, the President unbuckled his belt, then pulled his pants off of him over his shoes. Ed kicked his shoes off, and his socks, and then the President peeled off his undershirt. When Ed was down to boxer shorts only, the President kissed him again. He stroked his chest with what appeared to be admiration, and kissed him.

 

This was pretty standard, The President’s stripping Ed down before doing anything. Ed had never asked, but he got the impression that the President liked to look at him. It was flattering, that he took his time with this, trailing his hands all over Ed’s body, cupping here and stroking there, kissing him, holding him around his waist. It implied he thought Ed was pretty, even if he didn’t waste words saying so. Ed liked it that, he liked it more than he should, probably, so he didn’t mind if nothing was said about it.

 

When the President kissed him again, he leaned forward into it. He leaned over and kissed the President back into the pillows. He climbed onto him so that his knees were either side of the President’s hips, and he needed one hand on the headboard to steady himself, and kissed him again. He used his other hand to untuck his shirt and undo his belt. He undid his shirt buttons and felt his chest through his undershirt, then pushed it up so he could kiss him there. He moved himself, and his mouth, down over the President’s body until he was positioned where he could jerk down the President’s pants and get at his dick. It was hard, so Ed pulled the elastic waist of the President’s shorts out carefully before jerking them down, so it wouldn’t catch. Then, he put one hand on the bed, used the other to cup the President’s balls, and slid his mouth over the shaft of his dick as far as he could.

 

He heard the President take a sharp breath and he pulled his mouth back, to the tip. He used his tongue. He made his mouth tight. He slid it down again. Ed was, to an extent, proud of his gag reflex control, some of which he’d acquired via the usual route and some of which he’d acquired from not tossing his lunch in life or death situations. He went to work. He knew the steps of this particular dance about as well as he knew anything.

 

It didn’t take long before the President’s dick was slick and salty in his mouth. He thought he could feel him get harder when that happened. Thicker somehow. He gripped to bottom of the shaft to hold it there. The President grunted, and he slid his mouth down as far as he could again. The President said his name. Then he said it again. Then he said it a third time, and it didn’t sound like an appreciative sex noise at all, it sounded like he wanted Ed’s attention.

 

Ed slid his mouth off of the President’s dick and looked up at him. “Sir?”

“Come up here,” the President said.

 

Ed did. It confused him, but he did it. He leaned up until he was lying on top of him, chest to chest, skin to undershirt. The President touched his cheek. Pushed his hair back from his forehead. He lowered his eyes and ran his hand down the length of Ed’s body, before cupping his ass, patting it once, and letting go.

“I think that’s enough of that, Meechum.”

“Sir?”

“That’s alright. You can stop.”

“But I…”

“You know you don’t have to do this,” the President said.

 

Ed frowned. “I… sir?”

“To keep your job. It’s not required. You’ve earned it, you have your position through merit. It’s not because you… it’s not required. This doesn’t affect anything.”

“But I…”

“Do you know that?”

“Sir, I don’t understand.”

“It’s pretty straightforward, Meechum.”

“Was I, uh… was I not doing it right, sir?”

The President laughed, quickly. Fondly. He patted Ed’s shoulder. “Oh, no, no, of course you were. You were doing it expertly.”

“Well, then…”

“Don’t take it personally. I just think I’ve hit my daily limit for feigned enthusiasm.”

 

Ed leaned up. He blinked. He thought he should be hurt, and he probably would be in a minute, but right now it pissed him off too much for anything much to sink in. It was weird enough having this conversation in just his boxer shorts, lying on top of the President in a bed in New Hampshire when he’d thought he was just about to be having sex, but the implication in that statement was appalling.

 

“Alright,” the President said. “Don’t make that face.”

“Then don’t say that,” Ed snapped.

 

Snapping was too far. It was insubordinate, and Ed knew it as soon as he did it. The President’s eyes widened and he gave Ed a sharp look. “Excuse me?”

 

“It’s not fake, sir,” Ed said, more aggressively than he meant to. His tone was probably digging his own grave for him, metaphorically speaking, and he tried to get a handle on it. It wasn’t easy. “If you thought it was then I’m sorry, but I’m not feigning anything.”

 

The President made a resigned, if slightly sarcastic expression in response. “Well, aren’t you devoted.”

 

Ed lifted his chin and didn’t say anything. Silence seemed to make the President falter.

 

“Alright, Meechum,” he said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to…”

 

Ed didn’t say anything to that either. He started to climb off. He reached for his pants.

 

“I didn’t mean…” the President started to say. “Look. I should’ve… I should probably be alone.”

 

Well you’re sure going about that the right way, Ed thought. And would have said, had it been anyone else besides the President. He didn’t want to go. He didn’t want to work or sit in his room watching bad hotel television and drinking shitty, expensive minibar beers, but he would if there was going to be this kind of conversation. The hurt had started to trickle in by now, and he looked away. Maybe his technique was off after all.

 

The President was silent for quite a while. Maybe as much as a full minute. Ed didn’t put on his pants, though the President pulled his own shorts up and his undershirt down over his middle. Ed thought he should dress himself too, but he also found that he couldn’t. He just waited. He waited until the President picked up his hand and held it again. He stroked his thumb over it again. “Would you…” he said. “Do you want to come back over here?”

 

Ed frowned.

 

“I’m sorry,” the President said. “It’s been a long day. And things…”

 

Ed didn’t ask him to finish. He knew he wouldn’t. Instead, he pulled his hand away, stood up, and picked up their glasses from the tray. He handed the President his glass and took a sip from his own.

 

“I don’t…” the President said. “I’m taking it out on you. You don’t deserve it.”

 

Ed took another slug. He sat down.

 

“Meechum?”

 

“It’s not fake, sir,” Ed said. It burned him a little on the way out. He told himself it was the bourbon.

 

The President sighed. He took Ed’s hand again. Squeezed it. Ran a hand up his arm, up and down.

 

“Should I go?” Ed said.

 

“No,” the President said. “You shouldn’t. You should stay.”

 

The look in his eyes was painful. Like it cost him something to say that. Ed felt his breath catch. The President looked sad, and hurt, and sheepish, actually. Which was reasonable, probably, but Ed didn’t like it. He’d started to feel bad about this whole exchange and he wanted it to be over. He didn’t know how to make it be over. “I just…” he said. “I’m not faking it.”

“I know, Meechum,” the President said. “I don’t think you could fake things if you tried.”

 

“Yeah I could,” Ed said, knocking back his glass. “I’ve worked undercover, I can fake something if I need to. It’s called the Secret Service, not the… Obvious Service.”

 

The President laughed at that. Properly. It was an actual, decent chuckle, and it went until he sipped his bourbon, apparently to calm himself down.

“That’s… wow,” Ed said. “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve said in a while. My apologies, sir.”

“I don’t know, maybe I needed it pointed out. These are important operational details here.”

“Just not…” Ed said. “I don’t fake giving head.”

 

The President snorted. Then he looked awkward. Ed held his gaze for a few seconds, long enough to make the point, and then he smiled at him. After a pause the President stroked his arm again. It was slow. Gentle. “Oh, you don’t, do you?” he said, softly.

“I do not, sir,” Ed told him. “Head is 100% genuine.”

“Well, I’m sorry I interrupted it.”

“I’ll start again.”

“That’s alright. I think…”

“Well then can I kiss you?”

 

The President gave a low, indulgent laugh. “Sure.”

 

So Ed put his glass down and did. A firm, intentional, bourbon and dick flavored kiss. Then a small one, a peck to seal it off. Then he sat up and patted his palms against his thighs.

 

“What’re you doing?” the President asked.

“Thinking.”

“About what?”

 

Ed leaned back over and kissed him again. The President grinned against it before he kissed Ed back. He pulled Ed onto him. His hands travelled up and down Ed’s naked back. “You think a lot, don’t you?” he said. “Sometimes I wonder what you think about.”

“A lot of stuff.”

“That’s a very good non-answer.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” Ed said. The President stroked him.

“No, no. No. No need to be…”

“Just… stuff,” Ed said.

“Do you ever think about this?”

 

Ed took a breath. “Yes,” he said.

 

The President grunted. He grunted in a way that meant it was the right answer. Then, before Ed had time to think anything else, the President pushed him backwards. Not hard, but suddenly enough that Ed had to put a hand down on the bed to not fall over.

 

The President clicked his fingers, and then he pointed. To his cabin bag, tucked next to the bedside table. Ed grabbed for it. He opened it up and the President reached in and dug around. He squirted shaving oil onto his hand and had Ed put the bag down again.

 

Ed always wanted to ask how much of the President’s reliance on skincare products as lubricants had to do with how he thought about sex generally, and specifically how he thought about sex with Ed. He wondered if it had to do with the idea that buying an actual personal lubricant and carrying it in his cabin bag would be admitting to something he didn’t want to. They’d had regular lube at the residence, so he obviously used it with the First Lady, but for these on the road activities with Ed he used this oil. Ed wasn’t jealous about it, it was just a point of relevance, that the President didn’t pack lube because he wasn’t ever planning to fuck anyone. Or if he was, then he wasn’t admitting it.

 

Ed thought about that, but he didn’t think about that for very long. The President put his greased up hand around Ed’s dick and started stroking. It was slightly cold, which gave him a start, but even that just made everything jump. If speculation had made him start to get softer, the President resolved that instantly. His grip was firm, and expert, and it took a very short time until Ed started leaking pre-come onto his fingers.

 

When that happened, the President removed his hand. He gave the tube of oil to Ed and then he lay back onto the pillows and pulled Ed onto him. They kissed. It was hot and messy and sticky, but also confusing. Ed had read events as the President jerking him off, which he sometimes liked to do, especially while looking him directly in the face like he wanted to see how long it would take Ed to stop staring back and start losing control of things. But he’d taken his hand away. He’d started kissing behind Ed’s ear and rubbing his body against Ed’s hard-on. Ed had one hand supporting himself on the President’s chest and the other beside him, awkwardly clutching the ersatz lube while he parsed through what was happening.

 

Then he thought he understood and his heart caught in his throat. The President wanted Ed to fuck him, that’s what he was supposed to do here. That’s what the lube was for and that’s why he’d been prepping him. He wanted Ed’s dick in his ass. And Ed’d never done it to him before, because the President had never wanted that before and the significance of it seemed daunting, even frightening.

 

He wanted to ask questions about it. Ask for specific directions. Check that he was correct in his interpretation. But he also knew he shouldn’t. What he was being asked to do here was like petting a bear, it was dangerous. There could be no sudden movements. If he asked, he’d be making the President say it out loud and Ed wasn’t stupid enough to risk his reaction to that.

 

He also wasn’t stupid enough to try to turn him over. The President would need to be able to see him, Ed knew that. He’d need to move carefully, and he’d need to do everything in plain sight if he was going to do this at all. He leaned up, slowly, stretching over the President’s body, and kissed his mouth. He did it solemnly. Just once, and gently.

 

He knew his expression was stern but he thought that was alright. The President was watching him so warily, it couldn’t hurt to show that he was serious. Then he leaned back onto his knees, put his hands on the President’s hips and tilted them forward, up so he could see his ass. He waited. If he’d got it wrong, this would be when he’d know.

 

He hadn’t. The President’s expression was halfway between furious and terrified, but it wasn’t an expression that meant he wanted Ed to stop. He would have said something if he had, or he’d have moved away. He didn’t. He moved his legs, he bent them up to give Ed easier access. Ed’s heart thumped against his chest so aggressively he thought it must be audible, but he squirted oil onto his hand and then when he’d done that, he watched the President’s face while he oiled him up and pried him open. The entire world had gone silent around him. The only sound he could hear was the pounding of his own blood.

 

Then, when it seemed right, when the minute change in the President’s expression and the precise softness in the President’s ass made it seem right, he put his hand around his own dick and slid in.

 

The President made a sound. It was a short, low, grunting sound, and it pushed at the inside of Ed’s chest so hard that it hurt. The extremity of it, of the tender, terrifying line he was walking, all of that was in that sound. He felt the President’s heels come up on the back of his thighs. The President was still wearing socks, Ed realized. He also realized that he hadn’t moved. His heart hurt so much it was holding him in place.

 

He thrust. The President’s eyelashes fluttered against his cheek. His mouth opened. He grabbed Ed’s ass and pulled him forward and up into him. He made another sound. Whining. Guttural. Ed thrust again, and the President stared up at him with wide eyes.

 

Ed started to move, to build rhythm. It felt weighted, bright, haloed in meaning as if his every heartbeat was an electric pulse. His hands, he realized, were not even gripping. They were pressed softly into the back of the President’s shoulders, as if he were too fragile for pressure. He moved them, to either side of the President’s head, on the headboard. That gave him balance to thrust harder, to push deeper. Doing that made the President make deeper sounds too. Made him close his eyes and grip harder on Ed’s ass.

 

That hard grip spurned him on. He’d been so concentrated on the President’s face he hadn’t even noticed how good it felt to be inside him. How tight and receptive his ass was. How he could feel it clench. He noticed it now. He put his weight on one arm and shoved forward, and used the other arm to grab the President’s hip. He thought he could get deeper still. He wanted to shove until there was real resistance.

 

The shirt the President was wearing annoyed him and he pulled it away. He tugged the undershirt up too, so he could feel the skin there, hot and soft. He felt him all over with his hand and then with his body as he pushed up again, pushed against him. Pressed his body against his.

 

He felt fleshy give and firm muscle. He felt skin on skin contact. Downy hair. Sweat. Friction. Sticky pre-come against his stomach. His mouth found the President’s and they kissed, messily, frantically. Ed wanted to pull on his lip and press his face into his cheek. The kisses were aggressive but they felt so soft too. Everything was sticky. By now, the rhythm had become intuitive. They were moving together as if they’d done it their whole lives, and with every thrust Ed was driving him further into the pillows, further against the headboard.

 

Then the President grabbed him, hard, all the way around and crushed Ed’s body against his. Ed felt him come, felt the heat and the movement of it, felt it spilling into the limited space between them, hotter even than his skin. Felt, rather than heard, the sounds he was making. His breath was hot against Ed’s cheek and it felt sensitive and amplified there. Low, quiet, grunting sounds. Truncated, strangled gasps. Then he made a soft, sweet sound and the intimacy of it broke Ed apart and he came too, almost before he knew it, and he kept coming, rocking his body against the President’s until, it felt like, everything was gone.

 

He pulled himself out and fell forward, feeling the President’s arms move up around him, feeling the sweat on both of their bodies, the President’s come on his stomach, all over everything. He didn’t know if he was supposed to or allowed, but he wanted to bury his face between the President’s shoulder and his neck, so he did. The President’s hands pressed him there. Those hands felt strong. They felt sure of things. That seemed good, to Ed. It seemed good that he hadn’t stopped being sure.

 

He felt the President kiss him, high up on the side of his face, near his hairline, and it moved through his body like a wave, good and safe and warm, pulsing in time with the rest of him. He didn’t know what to do in response so he didn’t do anything. He just lay there, panting, frowning into the crook of the President’s neck, breathing his way back to normality. Just letting the President of the United States stroke his back as if that was in any way appropriate for a man on duty. Letting the President stroke him while his heart stopped pounding and his body stilled.

 

He didn’t think it through too obsessively. He wasn’t Tom Yates. You could write about things all you wanted, but all that would do was stop yourself from living in them. You put yourself in the past or the future like that and you couldn’t be right there where you needed to be, where things were actually happening. You could get killed that way, or you could make a mistake, but it was more than that: you could miss things. If you thought too much about how to describe things, like the slowing race of the President’s heartbeat, or the solidity of his body and the thickness and firmness of his arms around you, then you’d miss things, and they would be over before you’d even had a chance to really notice.

 

When he got up to go to the bathroom and wash his hands and sponge the come off his body, the President wouldn’t kiss him again. That was okay. Ed expected that. He didn’t know what else he expected, but he knew the President wasn’t going to go straight from letting Ed fuck him in the ass to romantic kissing. He understood the terms of their arrangement, or thought he had, and it didn’t include that. They did romance at the start, sort of, but not at the end, ever.

 

Understanding that, though, didn’t mean he didn’t hesitate before getting up and putting his undershirt on. He did it eventually, but he didn’t want to. He didn’t want to stop lying there. He didn’t want to get up. The President only sort of looked at him when he did.

 

In the bathroom, the enormity of what had happened hit him all over again. Before washing his hands he had to grip the side of the sink to stay upright. He wasn’t stupid, he wasn’t pulling a Sansa Stark here, he understood the situation. The President missed his wife and he felt bad, and Ed was there, but there was so _much_ in it. The fact of the President _letting_ Ed in the way he had done, _trusting_ him. How softly he’d pushed against him and insisted, how wary and vulnerable he’d seemed. How he had held on to Ed and let Ed hold on to him.

 

Ed felt worn out. He wished he could have stayed in the bed, and he kicked himself for wishing that. Don’t put yourself in the past, he told himself. Don’t anticipate the future. Right now is right now, and you respond to it. So you wash your hands, Ser Edward, and you leave with your dignity intact.

 

When he came back into the room, he closed the bathroom door behind him, just as he’d closed the hallway door at the beginning of the evening. He intended it to give that impression, of sealing the room for a private conversation. The President was putting on pyjamas. Ed wasn’t wearing anything except boxer shorts and his undershirt, but he made his body language circumspect and professional anyway. By instinct, probably. “Alright, well,” he said. “Thank you, sir.”

 

That sounded stupid. Even to him, even in the context of their agreement. Thank you sir, like he’d been given some kind of treat. And he had, sure, in a way, but that wasn’t how he was supposed to feel about it. He didn’t like that that was what he said about it. He felt bad. He couldn’t put things in order.

 

But it didn’t matter what he liked or how he felt. It mattered what he did. What he did was look for his pants. They were on the other side of the bed from the bathroom, but he refused to look in any way sheepish or retiring when he went to pick them up. Just professional.

 

The President stopped buttoning his pajama shirt and looked at him. “What are you doing?”

“My, uh, my pants, sir?” Ed said, not really knowing why that needed an explanation. He guessed the President had just retreated into being defensive again. That wasn’t unusual, but it was tiring. Ed sighed internally, but not externally, since the time for externalizing was over.

 

“Meechum,” the President said, “get into the bed.”

“Sir?” Ed said.                 

“Don’t argue with me.”

“I wasn’t…”

“Meechum,” the President said, firmly, and with such finality that Ed couldn’t have stopped himself doing what he was told if he’d wanted to. He crawled over the bed to the far side and got in.

 

The President buttoned his last button, then he took off his watch and laid it on the side table. All of this felt laboriously slow to Ed, perched under the covers and waiting for his next instruction. He thought he felt excited, but also he didn’t really know what he felt, except that he needed to know what was happening. If it had been anyone else besides the President he would have demanded to know.

 

After a moment of what almost looked like hesitation, the President picked up Ed’s battery radio and handed it to him, with the mics. “Put your pants down, Meechum,” he said. “You don’t need those.”

 

Ed hadn’t realized he was still holding them. He was uncomfortable just dropping his pants onto the floor beside the bed, but he did it. There was a definite strange feeling in leaning up out of the covers to take the radio too, with just an undershirt and his boxers on, in the President’s bed, but he did it. He didn’t question it. It wasn’t his job to question it. At least, that was what he was gathering from the President’s tone.

 

“Let them know,” the President said. “Let them put somebody else on. You need your sleep.”

“Sir, I don’t…”

“I told you not to argue with me.”

“I’m not supposed to check in for another… what time is it? I don’t need to sleep, I’m on duty.”

 

The President picked up his watch from the bedside table and held it at arm’s length to read to read it. He squinted. Ed wondered if it was easier for him to do that than to just put his glasses on. He almost offered to take the watch and read it to him.

 

“It’s nearly two,” the President said. “Is two alright with you?”

 

Ed swallowed. “Yes, sir. They’ll expect me on the hour.”

“And then they’ll leave you alone?”

“I’m supposed to check in every hour. I can’t sleep on duty.”

“Well, then have them relieve you.”

“But I’m… sir, they’ll expect me to hand-over and then in the morning…”

 

The President made a stony face, like he was fed up, and Ed started to get out of the bed.

 

“Stay there, Meechum,” the President snapped. “I’m not going to tell you again. Stay there, and tell them I need you fresh tomorrow, and to put someone else outside the door.”

“But sir…”

“Just do it, Meechum. Do you want a shirt to wear?”

“I, uh… I have an undershirt, sir.”

“Don’t sleep in something you’ve been wearing all day. You won’t sleep well. Take this.”

 

He handed him a clean, white undershirt, and he did it in a way that meant it was something else Ed didn’t dare argue with. It still had fold creases in it, it was fresh from his drawer. “Um,” Ed said. “Okay.” He pulled his own shirt over his head and put the new one on.

 

He felt uncomfortable just dropping the shirt onto the floor like he had with the pants, but the President nodded at him approvingly when he did. The President’s clean undershirt was baggy on him. It was soft.

“Alright. Go ahead,” the President said.

“Sir… Won’t they assume…?”

 

“You won’t let them assume anything,” the President said, sharply, “or you wouldn’t be here.”

 

Ed thinned his lips. He wasn’t sure what to say. The President rolled his eyes at him. “Oh look, I’ll do it. Put your microphone on, put your ear… thing in, and I’ll call them.”

“Sir?”

“They’ll want to instruct you, won’t they? Confirm it or something? Or is it instructions from you?”

“Yes sir. Confirm, then instructions from me.”

“Well, then, go on.”

“It should probably come from me in the first instance, sir.”

“Yes, but you’re not doing it, are you? Do what I’m telling you.”

 

Ed put his earpiece in, and plugged one of the mics into the radio. The President nodded, then he picked up his phone. He didn’t pick up the room phone, and Ed wondered why for a second, but then he figured the President probably didn’t know the number for operations by heart. Why would he? That was Ed’s job.

 

Ed could only hear one side of the conversation. “Who’s that,” he heard him say, sliding effortlessly from imperious to charming. “Well, good evening, Mr. Johnson.”

 

Johnson must have come back on at 12, Ed thought. Of course. It had been… six? seven? when he’d last seen him.

 

“I’m trying to convince him to get some rest. Will you help me talk him into it?” the President was saying. Ed had missed a step in the conversation. Though he guessed it didn’t really matter.

 

“There are one or two matters I’ll discuss with him this evening,” The President was saying, “but I need him on the morning shift tomorrow. Today? This morning. I need him with me then. Tell him to let somebody relieve him now.”

 

As he was talking, he strode around the room, pacing, but even that seemed to have purpose. He picked up Ed’s undershirt, and the rest of his clothes, and draped them neatly over the chair. Placed Ed’s shoes neatly beside them. There was a pause, in which Johnson was presumably speaking. “Yes well I’m _his_ boss,” the President said, sounding amused.

 

After picking up Ed’s clothes and his own, he poured drinks, the phone held between his shoulder and his ear. “I’m not particularly interested in operational details, Johnson. I need you to say ‘yes, sir,’ and then do what I’ve told you to do. That’s not difficult to understand, is it?”

 

He handed Ed a drink. Then, after a minute, he said “That’s what I thought. Goodnight,” and he hung up.

 

He put his phone and his glass down on the beside table. Then, he pulled back the covers and got into the bed. “Alright,” he said. “Radio in, or however you do it.”

 

Ed did it. “It’s Meechum,” he said. “You, uh, heard from the President?”

“Uh, yes sir,” the respondent said. “Let me give you to Johnson.”

 

In the second of fumbling, Ed took a sip. It felt bizarre to be having this conversation into his mic with a bourbon in the other hand. Bizarre, but strangely civilized. Then the President rubbed his thigh, which was thrilling.

 

“Sir?” Johnson said, when he picked up, and Ed had to work to regulate his voice in response.

“So it turns out I need a break after all. Orders from the top. I’ll come back on at eight, but you’re gonna need to send me that relief agent.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Any issue?”

“To be honest, sir,” Johnson said, “we were all kind of hoping you would.”

 

“Did I seem that out of it?” Ed said, almost sipping his drink but remembering not to.

“Not at all, sir. We just… you have to sleep sometime, and nobody wants to manage tomorrow without you.”

“I’m sure you’d all have managed fine,” Ed said, though he was privately gratified.

“All the same. Do we… need to know anything?”

“No, there’s no change,” Ed said. “This isn’t my genius strategy. This is standard hotel detail, same as you were trained in. We’re all cogs in this machine, Johnson. Just somebody else in sight of the door. That’s it.”

“It’s done, sir.”

 

“That’s great, Johnson,” Ed said. “Thanks. I’ll check in in the morning, but I’ve got my phone.”

“Of course. And if we can’t reach you, we’ll come to your room.”

“Well uh,” Ed said. Well so what. The worst that could happen is that they wouldn’t find him there. “Um, sure, okay, yeah, do that. If you can’t reach me.”

“Roger that, sir.”

“Goodnight.”

“Roger that.”

 

When he took the earpiece out again, the President took the radio out of his hands and turned it off. He put it back on the bedside table. “There,” he said. “That wasn’t so difficult, was it?”

 

Ed wasn’t sure he was allowed to smile, but he did anyway. “No, sir.”

“Will you be able to hear your phone?”

“No, it’s on vibrate while I’m on duty.”

“Well, get it then. Go on.”

 

Ed did. He hopped up and fetched his phone from his jacket and turned the ringer on. He felt strangely daring doing that, holding a glass in his other hand, in his shorts and a borrowed shirt, in the dim light of the room. All of this felt daring. Didn’t people ever speculate? They’d never done it on duty before, so maybe nobody knew. Would they say anything even if they did speculate? If they did their jobs right they wouldn’t, but Ed did wonder if he was going to read about it in somebody’s memoir down the line.

 

If he did, he’d deny it. Assuming he was out of the Service by then, the worst he’d have to worry about was asinine Kevin Costner jokes and David Derrickson analogies, but it could ruin the President’s legacy and he’d go to his grave before he let that happen. The President held back the covers for him when he slid his phone onto his side table, the pulled them over him when he got in. That was a nice gesture, Ed thought, the way the President patted the comforter down around him. Nobody would know about that to put in a memoir. Nobody would ever understand him well enough to write about it, except Ed, and he wouldn’t.

 

“Finish that,” the President said, to Ed, about his drink. “Do you want the television or something? Are you one of those sleepers?”

“I… uh… I never thought about it?”

“You would have if you were, so you’re not. Tell me, Meechum, is it that you don’t sleep a lot generally, or are you just good at fitting it in when you can?”

“Uh,” Ed said. “Both, sir? I think?”

 

“I’m not a natural sleeper either,” the President said. “I can’t stand the idea of not being ready if I need to be, for one thing. But for another, it always feels like wasted time. Is that what it is for you?”

“You have to, sir,” Ed said. “You can’t just not sleep.”

“And neither can you.”

“Well I mean I can actually but…”

“You keep arguing with me,” the President said. “I told you not to.”

 

Ed breathed in and thinned his lips, but he didn’t say anything else. The President seemed content with that. He took Ed’s glass out of his hands and put it next to Ed’s radio. He held both of Ed’s hands between his for a moment. Then he let go, turned off the lamp and lay down. He put his arms around Ed’s waist and pulled him against him, down under the covers. He pulled him so close Ed’s ass was right up against his dick. “Get some sleep, Meechum,” he said, low into Ed’s ear. “You’ll be a wreck.”

“Sir…” Ed started to say, but the President cut him off.

“Goodnight,” he said, with finality.

 

It took Ed a while to sort through the deck of things he was feeling. Mostly shock. Also agitation. Confusion. Some other things too, but they’d wait till he got to them. He didn’t think he could sleep in here, wondering if people would ask him about it, in the dark, in New Hampshire, in a hotel bed with the President. It took him a long time, when he got home, to learn how to get to sleep at all. For a long time it felt strange to be in a regular apartment, instead of a tent or makeshift wooden box in rise of the Valley with the wind howling into it so you could never get warm enough. He’d have to push the covers off, or leave the window open. He’d hated the cold when he’d been there, and then he was back and he couldn’t let it go.

 

He felt the President stroking him. He wondered if he did it on purpose. He didn’t think so. It felt more reflexive than that. Still, it took some of the edge off the shock anyway.

 

He’d never worried about that, not sleeping. Not that, and not the fact that he’d jerked upright every time he woke up either. He’d done that for several months, but he figured it would pass eventually, and it did. The alertness never stopped, and it probably wouldn’t, but that didn’t matter. It made him better at his job. Besides, when he couldn’t sleep, he could do more hours.

 

He wanted his heart to stop racing. He knew it probably wouldn’t stop, not in the warm. Lying down, in the dark, in the warmth of the bedclothes and two bodies and central heating and the President’s arms around him, tight, it was too suspiciously safe for him. It was exactly the kind of safe where you relaxed and dangerous things happened and kept happening.

 

He did feel sleepy though. He felt soft and tired and worn out, but he knew there was something else he should be paying attention to. He could feel it. Because that’s how he always felt when he tried to sleep.

 

It felt hard to pay attention to whatever it was with the President’s breath against his neck. With one of the President’s hands lazily fondling his chest and his stomach and the other one resting between his thighs. And there was warmth inside him too, quiet and burning, some stupid silent feeling he didn’t know how to name. He shouldn’t name it anyway. It didn’t need naming. Just one of those stupid thoughts.

 

The fact that he couldn’t move panicked him for a hot second until he made a plan. If he couldn’t sleep, he’d just wait it out. And then he’d get up, and he’d get dressed, and he’d go to work again. He probably wouldn’t have time to go back to his room and shower, but he’d wear what he wore yesterday and count on the fact that nobody could tell one dark suit and light shirt combination from another. They probably couldn’t. Nobody would be looking at Ed that closely if he did his job right. Nobody would notice his presence.

 

He wouldn’t kiss the President goodbye because that wouldn’t be allowed anymore – no matter how tenderly he’d treated Ed tonight, the moment would have passed when he woke up. Ed would just go.

 

Thinking about that made him feel something. About not being able to kiss goodbye, but also about not showering, about wearing his same clothes. About how momentary things were, and especially this, and about how you didn’t and shouldn’t preserve them, because it hurt when you did. And he tried not to. He really did. He didn’t like holding on to things that weren’t there anymore.

 

But then there was this: if he didn’t shower, he would smell the President on him all day. When he lifted his sleeve to his mouth to give some order or some report, he’d smell them together and he’d be here again, for just a moment, and no-one would know it but him.

 

He thought about that. And about other times when this happened. Times not in New Hampshire, times when Ed drove home after it to his own apartment. Times he’d get into bed without changing, because it made sleeping easier, and he never needed to open a window to let in the cold.

 

He didn’t know why that was exactly. He could never precisely articulate that to himself, or more precisely he deliberately _didn’t_ articulate it, because there was no need to know anything more about it than he already did. What he knew was that on those nights, if he breathed in, if he took a deep breath of the smell on his shirt, he felt alright to sleep, in the warm and without the window open.

 

It didn’t need putting together. When you put something like that together, Ed knew, you start to notice the parts that are missing. The only thing different about this was that the arms around him that he’d usually imagine were really there.

 

He didn’t dream of the Valley, though he did dream of Kabul. He dreamed about learning to flirt for the first time, about drinking beers until he was drunk and cocking his hips in the exact right way to make a certain kind of man look at him. Learning how to do it at the right time so that only the right person would see it.

 

DADT, obviously. And nobody cared, but you still couldn’t be brazen.

 

It was warmer in the city, almost hot, and the breeze was benign there, even if nothing else was. But he didn’t dream about the things that weren’t. He dreamed about making love on a mattress with dust swirling in the air through shafts of light, curtains shifting. In his dream, there wasn’t any danger. Not to him, not to anyone. It was safe there. It wasn’t the Kabul of real life.

 

The Valley lurked in him too, but he didn’t visit it. It was miles away from these bars and these men. You’d meet their eye and then you’d leave together, then you’d fuck and never see them again. It didn’t matter, none of it did. That’s what he dreamed about. Drinking, kissing in the dark, fucking in the sunlight. He was warm, and he was safe. He’d left the Valley behind and he feared no evil.

 

He wasn’t afraid. If he shifted in his sleep, against the President’s body, he didn’t know about it.  


	3. Chapter 3

 

The President was hard against his ass when he woke up. It was the first thing he registered and he ground his ass against it before it had time to become a shock. The President was spooning him and Ed was grinding on him and he wasn’t thinking anything yet, just reacting. He felt the President nuzzling the back of his neck in response. He leaned into it. Then he registered where and when he was and who he was in bed with and his eyes snapped open and he started to move away.

 

He didn’t get very far. The President grabbed him, and then kissed him. The President, who apparently grew a beard like everyone else. Ed didn’t want to get too sentimental about it, but it was nice, that scratchy feeling when they kissed. He hadn’t had a sleepover like this since the Metropolitan police, since before moving up to the Capitol. When you don’t really do sleeping, Ed had found, you also tend not to really do waking up with people. With that kiss, he stopped moving and trying to get away and let it happen.

 

He didn’t know what time it was, except probably past check-in time for work. They’d need to hear from him. They’d need instructions. But it was too warm here, and too soft, to object to anything. Besides, he was doing his job anyway, wasn’t he? In a way? Definitely enough to avoid thinking too hard about that bullshit rationalization. What better way than to protect the President than by fucking him, after all. He imagined explaining that to operations, and he almost thought he could. He wouldn’t, ever, but he almost thought he could.

 

Thinking about that made him bold. Bold enough that when the President tugged him around, he pulled and kissed and didn’t apologize. He used his tongue messily and let his hands tangle in the President’s hair, he moved his hips, pushing himself against the President’s dick and pulling him on top of him to feel the weight of his body and how soft he was. He let the President lazily roll his borrowed undershirt off of him, pinning his hands, then felt him stoke all the way down the length of his naked body, grip him tightly at his waist. His skin was hot against the sheets, hot against the President’s body, and it felt good. The President’s hand felt good. Even the fabric of his pajamas felt good. And his hard-on, pressing into Ed’s leg while he loomed over him and then pulled him, suddenly, onto his side. That felt good.

 

Ed took that pull and that shirt-stripping as an invitation to bear-hug the President right around the middle, just like he’d wanted to do last night, back when he thought he couldn’t risk it. Also as an invitation to unashamedly rub his whole body against him and nuzzle into his neck and inhale deeply. He knew it was dumb, over-eager, or even just over-energetic for – what was it? It couldn’t be later than seven, or it had better not be – but he didn’t care. He didn’t think it should hurt, that it was the last time, but it did, and a lot, and he didn’t care.

 

He knew it was, though. The last time. Given what had happened and what the President had let Ed do. He’d known even then that it was the kind of thing you got to do only once, seeing him on his back like that, and then probably never again. He’d known it, and deliberately hadn’t thought about it, because he’d wanted to do it anyway. That’s what the President was like, Ed knew that by now. You didn’t get to see him show his throat, just like you didn’t get to see him grow stubble. Ed had, and he’d deal with the loss of that later. He’d deal with all of it later. For now he was doing this. ‘This’ being imprinting on him like a baby animal, apparently.

 

As close as he was, pressed up like that, he felt the President’s voice rumble through his chest before he heard it. “I see you’re awake,” he said.

 

That was thrilling. Thrilling enough that he almost thought he might be wrong. It sounded intimate. It sounded soft and amused and tender, and there was also a little strain to it. And Ed recognized that kind of strain, and he knew what to do about it. He didn’t say anything, but he moved himself again, moved his knee forward and his thigh up right under the President’s dick, which got a short, breathy grunt out of him. Ed kissed his neck again. He squeezed tighter.

 

The President’s hands were all over Ed’s ass. Gripping it, cupping the cheeks. That felt pretty good too. Ed had already started to get hard, somewhere in the tumble, but he hadn’t noticed it, not as distinct from the general bliss he was feeling anyway. He did now. Especially when the President pushed him hard, onto his back, pushed him down, and leaned up next to him, looming. The shock of that gave him a sharp jolt, and his dick jumped, and the President absolutely noticed it. Ed knew that because of the way he smiled. It was indulgent, but it was also vaguely threatening.

 

“Aren’t you just adorable,” he said, gliding a finger down the middle of his chest. “You’re like a cat that hasn’t been fed. It hasn’t even occurred to you, has it?”

 

“What hasn’t?” Ed said, though he thought, or possibly just hoped, that it had.

 

“That you might be getting yourself into trouble, moving yourself around like that.”

 

Ed’s heart had started to pound and all of his blood had rushed to his dick again, all at once, almost painfully. He felt electric, like he’d fry himself if he didn’t move. But he lay still, obediently, as the President’s hand travelled over his hips and his stomach and into his shorts.

 

He curled the hand around Ed’s dick, and then he waited. Specifically, he looked like he was waiting for Ed to speak.

 

“Oh yeah?” Ed said, almost choking. He looked up at him, from under his eyelashes. He didn’t bat them, but he almost did. He managed to twist his mouth into a smirk. “Trouble, huh?”

 

The President squeezed his dick. Sharply. “Cocky,” he said. “So cocky. To use, uh, well, the proverbial.”

 

Ed snorted at that. But not for long, because then he squirmed, because the President had gently started jerking him. Slowly, looking right at him. Much too slowly, actually. Ed wanted to buck up into it, to make the hint, but he wondered if he’d better not, and so he didn’t. The President kept going. And going. And then Ed couldn’t help it, and he moved.

 

The President smiled at him, but the smile was half indulgence and half warning, so Ed stopped where he was, even though it took a lot of effort.

 

“There’s probably an analogy here,” the President said, after waiting for Ed to still. He took his hand away from Ed’s dick as he said it, and Ed almost protested that, until he started rolling Ed’s shorts down over his hips. His fingers brushing against Ed’s skin were impossibly slow, but Ed forced himself not to say anything about that either. He gritted his teeth.

 

“Curiosity killed the cat or… made it hard,” the President said. He’d pulled Ed’s shorts all the way off by now. Ed felt he should be helping more, but he also knew he didn’t dare. He kept his hands where they were. “I’m mixing my metaphors. I must be tired.”

 

“Or horny,” Ed said.

 

The President’s eyes went wide, and he let out a short laugh. Then he shook his head, smiling, and he trailed his hand up Ed’s thigh. “Are you curious, Meechum?” he said, sliding the hand in between Ed’s legs. “About what’s about to happen to you?”

 

Ed opened his mouth but before he could say anything, the President gripped the cheek of his ass from underneath. Hard. Hard enough to hurt. He couldn’t move away from it, and he couldn’t move into it, not really, but it also wasn’t enough for him, not nearly enough. He wanted it to be harder.

 

He couldn’t let that show on his face though. Not for anything. Not right now. You’re a rock, he told himself. You absorb nothing. “So what’s going to…”

 

“Or horny, _sir_.”

 

It froze Ed where he was. He knew his eyes had gone wide and his cheeks had gone pink. He knew he was frozen, but he didn’t know how being this still could feel so volatile. “Yes.” He said. “Uh. Yes, sir.”

“Turn over,” the President told him.

“Sir?”

“Do it.”

 

He did. The President’s hand pushed down on the back of his neck, shoving his face into the pillow. He had just enough space to turn to the side, to be able to breathe. The President’s other hand gripped his hip, pulled his body back so he could feel his erection rubbing against his ass. Then the hand moved and gripped his thigh again, pressing into the flesh there, painfully, pulling and holding him tight where he was. He could feel the President moving against him, grinding. Slick already, dragging this sticky, oily friction against his skin.

 

He knew, on a practical level, that it would hurt like crazy if he didn’t lube up first, but that was hard to think about because didn’t know if he could hold out for as long as that would take them. That amount of waiting was too much. He didn’t know if he could be this hard for that long without losing it. “Sir,” he choked.

 

“What.”

 

That was all he said. What. In this aggressive, forceful tone that somehow, impossibly, made Ed harder. He hadn’t stopped rubbing his dick against Ed’s ass either. The slickness panicked him. Not because it didn’t feel good – it felt beyond good, good wasn’t even ballpark for it, but just… just what if the President came on his ass and didn’t shove it inside him.

“Sir,” Ed said, again. “Sir, please.”

 

The President growled. “What do you think I’m going to do here, Meechum, what do you think I’m doing?”

“Sir?”

“I’m going to fuck you right here in this ass, so hard you’ll walk crooked from it. Hear me?”

 

Ed couldn’t speak. There wasn’t room in him for words. But then the President slapped his ass hard, and grabbed it, and he choked again and he had to. “Sir, yes I do sir.”

“Any objections to that?”

“No sir. I… no sir.”

 

The President moved his body down over Ed’s so that he was speaking right into his ear. Very low. Like a rumble through the Valley when a truck was coming. Ominous and eternal and terrifying. “That’s right,” he said. “Because I own this ass. Absolutely.”

 

That was ridiculous. That was the stupidest thing Ed had ever heard. And it was so hot he couldn’t breathe. He felt his own dick aching against the sheets and it was burning him. “You do, sir,” he panted. “God. You do.”

“Say it.”

“You own my ass, sir.”

“That’s right. And what does that mean?”

“It means I want you to give it to me. Sir, I… please.”

 

Ed thought he could hear satisfaction in the President’s reaction. He’d moved up again, one hand still on Ed’s neck, but the other one was missing, and he made a grunt. It sounded approving. There were other sounds. Movements. Wetness. “Do you?” the President said.

“God, sir, god. Yes.”

 

He gasped at the feeling of lube on him. It was cold, and the President was not being gentle. It didn’t hurt, but it was firm and absolutely insistent, the President prizing him open like he was pulling apart a peach. “And what if I said no?”

 

He’d come anyway? He’d probably die coming. The world would end. “Please, sir.”

“Oh, now listen to you. You’re begging for it. I could do anything I wanted to you right now, and you wouldn’t object. You’d want me to do more of it. I could pound you into these sheets until you cried, and you’d want me to keep going.”

 

Ed was almost crying already. “Yes.”

“Does it feel good to beg me like that? You feel good being on your knees?”

 

Ed started to say yes again, but he didn’t get to. The President pushed right up inside of him and his head filled up with stars. He shoved all the way in there, right up into Ed’s body, and then he stilled himself and didn’t move. His arm was around Ed’s waist, and his other hand had stopped holding Ed’s neck against the pillow and it pulled him upright and god jesus fuck Ed was dying after all. His ear was against the President’s mouth again, he could feel his hot breath in it, and he had no idea what his face was doing and he hoped it wasn’t stupid.

 

“I am going to wreck you, boy,” the President growled.

 

Ed gasped. It took all of his fortitude not to come immediately. Every ounce of it. He grit his teeth and ground his ass against the President’s thighs, and somehow didn’t explode. Somehow. He could barely stop himself, but somehow he did.

 

The President shoved him forward again. He slid out and slammed into him. Again. And again. There was no picking up of pace, there was no gentle acclimation, he was just pounding him, pounding Ed in his ass and Ed was panting and choking and gasping again and hot in every inch of his body and filled up to the limit of his skin like a fucking balloon. The arm around his waist was firm and thick and sweaty, and the President’s body felt substantial and weighty on top of him, and the _sounds_ he made. The sounds he made would signal Ed’s death in actuality, he would actually die here, die and be consumed as an essential part of the food chain and not even mind about it. The President grunted like an animal. Like fucking Ed within an inch of his life was a biological necessity.

 

He didn’t know how long that lasted. Long enough and also too long and also not enough of it by far. A truncated eternity. Hot and wet and an event horizon. “Edward,” he heard the President say, between grunts, “you can come.”

 

Hearing his given name through the haze was abrupt. “Sir?”

“Do it.”

 

“Sir, I…” Ed said, but it wasn’t anything because he’d started coming as soon as he’d been told to and then it happened absolutely and there was nothing more to say. He felt himself spasming and spilling everywhere, all over his body and the sheets and he almost felt sorry because he shouldn’t be so untidy, but he couldn’t, he couldn’t think about it, not blacked out like this in a total void of full-bodied ecstasy. He thought he shouted. He probably did. The President came inside him, and Ed understood he’d been allowed to come only because the President was ready to, and somehow the hot feeling of being used and filled up like that made everything impossibly much. He ached. He sobbed. He howled.

 

“Meechum,” the President said. “Meechum, my god. Shhh.”

 

He didn’t sound angry though. He sounded pleased.

 

That was about as much as Ed registered for a while. He came to sweaty and rattled and sore and content. He wanted to lie there under the President’s body for the rest of his life, and he felt genuinely sad when the President pulled out of him and rolled away. He heard the sound of a tissue box but didn’t look. The pillows were soft and smelled good.

 

The President snorted, and Ed rolled onto his back to see what that was about. It was about him, or at least the President was smiling at him in a way that suggested it was about him. Ed frowned. “Sir?”

“You’ll need to shave,” the President said. “And comb your hair or something.”

“Well, I can go back to my room and…”

“Meechum,” the President said, “Take a look at yourself before you do.”

 

Ed stared for a second. He oriented himself in the room, and then in the context of work, and then he slid out of bed and went into the bathroom. He needed to do that anyway, but he took the opportunity to take a look in the mirror. The President was right, he looked like he’d been fucking for days. He ran his hand under the tap and smoothed his hair in place with water. He came out again.

 

“Better,” the President said. “You can use my razor. If, and I mean if, you rinse it properly, and I do mean properly.”

“Uh, yes sir, I don’t have to…”

“I suppose you don’t, actually. Everybody knows where you were. They just don’t know what you’ve been doing.”

 

Ed felt his face get hot at that. Not just because of the memory of it, but because of the insinuation. Because that wasn’t just recollection, that was precognition. It was flirting, with a promise of things to come. He didn’t know if he was supposed to acknowledge it. He put his hands on his hips and rocked back and forth. He bit his lip.

 

“Don’t use my razor,” the President said.

“I won’t.”

“Do clean up though.”

“Sir?”

“Meechum. Take another look.”

 

Ed did. The hair was the thin edge of the wedge. He looked sweaty and pink. He smelled like a lot of good but unprofessional things. There was come on his thighs. He decided to shower. His skin prickled under the hot water.

 

He regretted washing the smell of the night away but he thought, maybe, considering a few things, he could afford it. He didn’t like remembering anyway. He put his clothes on, straightened his tie. He realized he’d have to take another shower after he went running which seemed stupid and pointless, but it was too late to do anything about it now. He was already clean.

 

When he came out, somebody had brought a tray of food and coffee in. The President was slicing an apple, his glasses balanced on the end of his nose. “I don’t usually have breakfast in bed. I’m not used to it. I suppose you aren’t either.”

“No, sir.”

“At military school, Meechum,” the President said, “you don’t eat breakfast until after first formation. You’re dressed, you’re ready for the day before you sit down to it, and you’re… well, you know about that already, don’t you? You are dressed.”

 

Ed frowned. “Yes, sir? I mean…”

“Never changed my mind about it,” the President said. “It’s nothing but indulgence. Idleness. No point to it besides telling yourself it’s some kind of luxury, sitting in bed when you could be doing something useful. I don’t know why they brought this in.”

“You’re the President, sir. You could ask them not to. But I, uh, I don’t see the harm. At the moment.”

 

The President gave him a sharp look over his glasses. Ed lifted his chin. “Meechum,” the President said. “Sit down.”

“Sir?”

“Sit down. Over here.”

 

Ed travelled over and perched himself on the side of the bed, cautiously. He tapped his palms on his thighs. The President held out a slide of apple to him.

“That’s alright, sir,” Ed said.

 

The President didn’t retract the apple slice. He just stared at Ed until he took it. Which he did, and then, after a second, he bit into it. While he was chewing, the President caught his chin and tipped his face and kissed the side of it. He stroked Ed’s hair at the temple before he let him go. “There you are,” he said. “My god, it’s like feeding a deer.”

 

Ed swallowed his mouthful. “Sir?”

“Never mind. Here, have some more.”

“I should get to work, sir.”

“Just take the damn apple, Meechum. And hand me that tablet.”

“Yes sir.”

“And the paper.”

“Of course, sir.”

“Here.”

 

He held Ed out another apple slice, between the knife and his thumb. Ed took it. This time he didn’t argue. He didn’t argue with being handed a cup of black coffee either (the President never had milk), or a triangle of buttered toast. The President continued slicing and eating his apple. Ed had seen the apple ritual before. Sometimes he wanted to ask the President why he never ate anything else in the morning. Sometimes he wanted to insist he did. He could imagine that conversation in a different world. Put on a sweater, sir, eat something substantial, don’t give me all your toast. The President didn’t take suggestions like that, but Ed wanted to give them to him anyway.

 

The President dealt with the paper quickly and moved on to the tablet, presumably for the online press. Ed didn’t ask him for any details. He figured he’d be told what he needed to know.

“Meechum,” the President said, after a while, when Ed was finishing his coffee. “You won’t…”

“I won’t, sir. Never.”

 

The President seemed satisfied with that. He seemed satisfied in general, given that low-level irritation was his version of satisfaction. The online press had pissed him off. Ed didn’t ask about that either. “Well, alright,” the President said. “Now get out of here. We’ve both got work to do.”

 

Ed did. He went to his room. He changed into sweats. He shaved. He went running.


End file.
